Agility Quest

With "agility" as the Summer 2026 Team Meeting theme, the Project Management team came to us with an idea: create a D&D-style role playing game for over two hundred players where groups are given real FIU Online scenarios and must adapt to different hurdles along the way. "We want to see how agile teams are and get them solving their way through situations even when processes, situations, and resources change." 

Our team also collaborated with Dr. Bridgette Cram, FIU's VP of Academic Affairs, and Mr. David Snider, FIU's Senior VP and CFO, aligning with the university's initiative to boost collaboration across departments. Together with Lia Prevolis, the Associate VP of FIU Online, we created an activity that advanced FIU's Mission and fostered connections between over two hundred players across eighteen departments.

My two co-developers Kieron and Camilo have years of experience as players and gamemasters in D&D, and I have been a tabletop game developer for nearly nine years. The three of us had an aligned vision for the Agility Quest: provide players with an authentic role playing game (RPG) a la D&D, but keep the rules barebones. With an audience of mostly Baby Boomers and Millennials, we knew this would be many players' first experience with a tabletop RPG. We needed to keep the rules to a minimum, otherwise players would tune out. Here's what we kept in mind:

• Create a fantastical, compelling, light-hearted story 

• Explain the rules in under five minutes

• Foster collaboration and creativity

Funnily enough, many of our development priorities were rooted in instructional design: provide clear instructions, maximize audience engagement, and provide several resources for support. 

After a few brainstorming sessions to set the groundwork, we were ready for a playtest. I know from my experience as a game designer that playtesting is the most important part of the design process; testers will try unexpected things, ask unexpected questions, and they exploit the game's victory conditions in unexpected ways. 

Our testers appreciated both the novelty of the activity and the fact that the entire session was "deviceless". In addition to their praise, they provided valuable critiques that we used to further improve the final experience. While the content of their feedback was important, of course, it was their feelings that provided the most precious insight. What were they passionate about? When were they laughing, confused, frustrated, or bored? Paying close attention to their mannerisms was essential to creating the best experience possible for the big day.

After some rule changes and a handful of playtests, we were ready to train our DMs and prepare for the Team Meeting.

The Agility Quest was a huge success. We had built up hype around the office, but only the voluteer DMs and a handful of admins knew what we had in store. We gathered everybody together about fifteen minutes beforehand to go over the rules, and then it was showtime. During the two-hour session, the ballroom came alive with laughter and playful shouting. Players understood the game right away, and there were very few hiccups along the way—which is surprising for a group that large!

At the end of the day, the teams triumphed, successfully vanquishing our villain, the dreaded Intergalactic Auditor. On the bus ride home from the venue and for the next several days, our coworkers enthusiastically came up to us with stories from the day: solutions their group devised, surprising interactions they had, and fond memories they made. Hearing the ballroom fill with laughter and listening to people's stories let us know that our efforts had paid off. 

For even more details about the activity, read the manual below!